Column:

The Duggars need to cut it out already

By ChaToyya Sewell

Published Sept. 15, 2009

It didn't really hit home until I read an article about how Michelle Duggar had been pregnant for the majority of her adult life. I mean even the "Jon and Kate Plus 8" parents and octomom had the distinction of having all or most of those herds at once. (Although if I went into in-vitro fertilization and came out pregnant with octuplets, someone would be getting a stern talking to. There is a thing called over-success.)

In some misplaced form of sympathy, it felt like my uterus balled into a fist and I thought about Michelle's body: What about the minerals leeched from her poor tired bones every time she got knocked up, what about her poor vagina? Is a modern woman's body even made to shoot out 19 children? All in a day of doing God's work, I suppose.

In the past, there were legitimate reasons for the high birth rate. Not all 19 children were likely to survive childhood. Someone had to grow up and help you work and birth control was about as complex as porous lambskin condoms and pulling out. The Duggars as well have their reasons: the Quiverfull movement.

The Quiverfull movement is a growing subset of Christian denominations that oppose all forms of birth control, sterilization and family planning in favor of accepting as many children as possible, or in their view, "as God feels fit to give them."

That's fine, I guess, if your prerogative is to waste the finite resources of the world by having so many children, do it. I'm not judging (much). My main issue lies not with the patriarchal relationship that walks hand-in-hand with the Quiverfull movement. (Men are clearly defined head of the households and a woman's primary purpose in life is to continue the tradition of birthing as many children as possible.)

My problem is not with those horrible denim jumper dresses they all seem to have a propensity to wear (I'm serious, do a Google search), but with the public forums the Duggars use to spout their bullshit. The biography on the Duggar family Web site is indicative of this. Instead of answering the questions we all want to know — How's that sex after 25 years of marriage and 19 children? Any vagina rejuvenation services on the horizon? Does labor hurt anymore or does the child just plop on out when the time is right? — instead of this, the Duggars take the time to discuss their politics and the evils of birth control.

And I quote, "Michelle went back on the pill, but she conceived and had a miscarriage. At that point, they talked with a Christian medical doctor and read the fine print in the contraceptives package. They found that while taking the pill you can get pregnant and then miscarry. They were grieved! They were Christians! They were pro-life! They realized that their selfish actions had taken the life of their child. They prayed and asked God to forgive them, and to teach them to love children like He loves children..." Ugh. No comment.

In this cultural moment, it seems we are obsessed with ridiculously large families. The obsession lies somewhere between horrified and glorified on the pop culture scale. If you have not noticed, I lie more on the horrified side. Maybe it is a side effect of my mild distaste for sharing spaces with legions of children, maybe it is a bias from my childhood as the youngest of two and all the ensuing privileges that came with it or maybe it's just that every time I see a picture of Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar outnumbered by their brood, my uterus hurts.